Debates over immigration will often go something like this.
Pro-side: Immigrants are good for the economy.
Anti-side: But they commit crimes, use welfare, vote for the wrong policies, and change the culture.
Pro: Just punish the criminals, take away immigrants’ right to vote, require assimilation, and don’t let them go on welfare. These are called keyhole solutions.
Anti: That’s unrealistic.
The average GDP per capita in Haiti, adjusted for PPP, is about $3,200 a year, while the typical income of a household headed by a Haitian-American is $72,000 a year. These figures are not directly comparable, but we know that a Haitian coming to America massively improves their living standards. A person working a job is also good for Americans. Some say that immigrants suppress the wages of natives or take away employment opportunities, but I’ve shown that these are very stupid arguments, and you should never take seriously anyone who invokes “wage competition” or “protecting jobs” as a reason to oppose immigration, free trade, or the deployment of new technologies.
Yet while the purely economic case against immigration can be cast aside as degrowther nonsense, other restrictionist arguments have more merit. Immigrants do in fact sometimes fail to assimilate, vote for left-wing parties, commit crimes, and use welfare. The restrictionist side assumes that the people we let in will either always have the exact same rights as everyone else, or they will be kept out.
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If only people were as rational as B Caplan indeed...
Why not just rely more on guest workers ? Guest workers improve the economy, but don't change the culture given that they are there only for a limited amount of time, if they commit a crime they can be deported much more easily (since they have a home back at their home country ), they have no rights to welfare, and can't vote. The one issue I foresee is the problem of their children being born in the U.S. which would result in them getting citizenship, to my knowledge this is a big part of how the massive German guest worker program from Turkey ended up changing the demographics of the county once they allowed for birthright citizenship. Maybe there's a way around that ?